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The 'Objets Sonores': Rethinking Structural Conventions in Schaeffer, Boulez, Grisey

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The 'Objets Sonores': Rethinking Structural Conventions in Schaeffer, Boulez, Grisey The 'objets sonores': Rethinking Structural Conventions in Schaeffer, Boulez, Grisey Alessio Siclari Goldsmiths College University of London PhD Paginated blank pages are scanned as found in original thesis No information • • • IS missing Abstract A rethinking of the conventional strategies of musical structuring has been intensively developed since WWII. At this time, not only the rules of the codified system of tonality were overcome, but also the notion of musical sound itself as it had been conventionally intended was questioned. The note, which implies the supremacy of pitch among sound qualities, was no longer accepted as the basic element of musical language. The notion of 'sonic object' was introduced, which entails the idea that musical sound can exceed the limits defined by conventional practice and codified system, and should be considered as an object to be researched and understood, in order to exploit its full potential. The research consists of a comparative study of three musicians operating in France after WWII: Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Boulez, and Gerard Grisey. Apart from the obvious geographical connection, they share the will to develop a new way to organise music on the basis of the accurate understanding and complete exploitation of the sonic object. The research is organised in three sections, each devoted to the study of one musician, each using his theoretical and, where possible, his musical output to clarifY his thought and the reasons of his practice. However, for every specific topic of discussion, comparisons between the musicians are undertaken, so that the originality and/or inconsistency of each is highlighted by a confrontation with the others. Overall, the work shows how, notwithstanding evident superficial differences, especially in the definition and description of the sonic object, all three musicians had to confront very similar basic issues, and how the theoretical codification of any music is in fact, most of the time, a quest for a conceptual coherence which is always exceeded by musical practice. Table of contents Abstract Table of contents Introduction p.6 Chapter 1, Pierre Schaeffer: 'intentional units' 13 Musical research: tradition and innovation 14 The interrelation of naturelleulturel 18 Intentional listening 28 Permanence/variation in the musical systems 31 Valeurlearactere 38 Analysis and synthesis: transition to music 40 Objet sonore 43 Epoche and ecoute reduite 45 Objects and structures 53 Intentional units 55 Chapter 2, Pierre Boulez: from structures to objects 60 A conceptual opposition: tabula rasa and traditional heritage 60 Sound and perception 64 Structure fa: functional experimentalism 68 Series and alea 72 a) series 72 b) alea 75 From structures to objects 79 Analysis: system and open objects 84 Eclat 90 The piano cadenza 93 Incises 104 a)Part 1 108 b)Part 2 122 Conclusions 132 Chapter 3, Gerard Grisey: object and process 135 Grisey and modernism 136 Natural models 142 Musical perception ]44 Pre-audibility 146 Object and process 149 Prologue 151 a) process 152 b) objects 159 Vortex temporum 178 a) Part 1 - process 178 b) Part 1 - objects 184 c) Part 2 - process 198 d) Part 2 - objects 199 Conclusions 203 Conclusion 207 Bibliography 213 Introduction The musical language has gone through a process of substantial revision during the last century. Although the development of this process has not been as linear as has often been described, it is possible to say that the substantial rethinking ofthe fundamentals of musical language that took place after WWII is a result of the process of erosion of tonal language begun in the Nineteenth Century. The necessity to substitute the traditional reference of tonality with other forms of codification and regulation of music had been resolved quite pragmatically by dodecaphony. Here, a simple and adaptable concept had been made the theoretical base for the extreme thematic elaboration of atonality. However, the effective structural functioning of thematic elaboration within perception had not been confronted. The musical structures of the Second Viennese School, deprived of the reference to a codified theory such as tonality, were largely produced on the basis of formal intuition, just as had happened before with atonal mUSIc. This, of course, does not mean that tonal theory could provide the tools for a completely rationalised compositional process. This has not been the case for any musical theory, and the theoretical production ofthe decades after WWII is not an exception. However, the need to clarify the functioning of musical perception and organisation became a central issue in the theoretical debates of the 1950s, and has remained so until now. The complexity of the issue has become increasingly clear, especially because, as is exemplified by the theories discussed in the present research, the influence of cultural education on perception was not sufficiently considered at first. Furthermore, not all the theoretical production has had either the same scope or the 6 same level of completeness and accuracy. In fact, composers tend to focus on the practical aims of their research, and, therefore, tend to be less interested in expounding theoretically on complex fundamental issues. Schaeffer, Boulez, and Grisey, the three musicians studied in this research, exemplifY this disparity of theoretical elaboration. They all have attempted to achieve the definition of a musical language without the support of inherited structural conventions. This, which is a common practice in contemporary music, has been done with a different level of theoretical awareness. While Schaeffer has embarked on a long work of research aimed at an unrealistic completeness, Boulez and Grisey have more pragmatically limited their theoretical reflections to the definition of reference points useful to the compositional process. This does not mean that their musical practice does not imply a specific understanding of musical fundamentals that are not explicitly discussed. The theoretical work of Schaeffer can be useful to highlight some fundamental categories of music that underpin any musical practice. Therefore, it can help to clarifY those aspects of the music of Boulez and Grisey that have not been directly and thoroughly confronted in their writings. Obviously, the present research does not aim to deal exhaustively with the problem. Schaeffer's theory represents an ambiguous critical means, since it is both a source for critical reflection and a theory historically determined. Moreover, it focuses on the description of sound perception, while it is incomplete for what concerns the study of the organisation of musical structures. However, in many ways the fundamental categories defined in Schaeffer's work, such as permanence-variation, identification-qualification and object-structure, are meaningful at a structural level. They underpin the compositional process of the music of Boulez and Grisey, and 7 therefore will be used to discuss the theoretical and musical production of both the composers. Furthermore, the procedure adopted by Schaeffer to attain the definition of a musical language with no reference to previous linguistic conventions, shows many similarities to that of Boulez and Grisey. The starting point of Schaeffer's theoretical elaboration is the objet sonore. This could be defined as a sonic event, which, through a particular listening technique, I is perceived as a unit and heard as an exclusively sonic phenomenon, with no reference to a generative source or a linguistic meaning.2 Speaking in practical terms, the objet sonore is an abstraction, since, as is discussed in the chapter dedicated to Schaeffer, the perception of a sound as an exclusively aural phenomenon is probably not possible. However, the concept of objet sonore has other, more far-reaching implications. In fact, through the analysis and description of sounds isolated from any kind of context, Schaeffer expects to be able to define thoroughly all qualities of sound that are valuable to creating structural connections in music, without being affected by cultural habits that could influence his perceptual abilities. A similar procedure can be recognised in both Boulez and Grisey. Boulez aimed to attain liberation from cultural influence through the 'automatic' writing of his first serial experiments. In this way, he wanted to reach a stage where each sound could be neutrally described as the interrelation of the four classic parameters. On the other hand, Grisey relied on the analysis of sound spectra to achieve an understanding of the 'natural' characteristics of sound, and therefore of the qualities of sound that can have a structural function (i.e. connective role) in music. Obviously, neither Boulez nor Grisey explicitly define something like the Schafferian objet sonore. However, the idea of creating music that does not rely on inherited conventions implies necessarily the reference to a model of sound whose cultural traits I See Schaeffer, 1977a: 270-272. 2 See Schaeffer, 1977a: 268-270. 8 should have been somehow neutralised. A completely 'un-conventional' music needs to be based on structures, and therefore qualities of sound, that are universally perceptible, since there is no convention to rely on in order to communicate to the listener. The morphological models of sound defined by the three musicians studied in this research are substantially different, the 'universal' qualities of sound that they detect after the cultural de-conditioning process are different,
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